Two weeks had passed since the encounter with Vitor. Two weeks in which I learned that Aureus's path is thankless, slow, and demands a patience I didn't know I had.
While a Chosen of Umbra can simply hunt, break, and dominate to fill their Fervor meter, I had to wait for the world to need me. I couldn't create the problem just to solve it; that would be manipulation, and manipulation weakens my Code of Conduct.
So, I became a vigilante of circumstance.
I spent my nights patrolling train stations and alleys in the city center. I intervened in three muggings (only protecting the victims with shields, without breaking the muggers' bones), helped rescue a cat stuck in a storm drain (yes, that counted as an Act of Faith; innocent life matters), and, on one tense night, stood between a group of Awakened fighting over territory, serving as a containment wall until their anger cooled.
With every act, I felt the warmth in my chest increase. The invisible Fervor meter rose drop by drop. It was exhausting.
But today, the air was different.
I was on the terrace of the building where I live, a cramped studio apartment in Bixiga[1]. The city glowed around me, oblivious to my anguish.
I took off my jacket. My right arm shone intensely in the darkness, the golden light pulsing with an almost cardiac rhythm. I was at the edge of the First Circle. I just needed a push.
"Let's do this," I murmured, staring at an old water tank that served as my target. "I can't just know how to shield and punch. Vitor has spears. He has range. If I want to stop him without killing him, I need something else."
I tried to mold the light. Aureus's sacred geometry is solid, rigid. Making it curve is like trying to bend iron with your mind.
I closed my eyes and searched my memory for something that made sense to me. It's no use trying to copy swords or arrows from movies. Faith needs a shape the soul recognizes.
I remembered the farm. I remembered the smell of wet earth and the sound of the lasso cutting the air when we needed to hold a runaway steer without hurting it. The lasso isn't a weapon of death; it's a tool of containment. Of order.
Preservation. Control. Bringing back what was lost.
I extended my arm of light. Instead of projecting a defensive "Bulwark," I visualized the extension of my will.
"Tether."
The light hissed, unstable. My arm ached—not a physical pain, but a pressure on my spirit. The Fervor accumulated over the last few weeks burned all at once, like gasoline thrown on a bonfire.
I felt something "break" inside me. It wasn't a videogame click, nor a "Level Up" message. It was an expansion. As if my lungs suddenly had double the capacity.
The Second Circle opened.
The light on my arm changed. Before, it was just a replacement limb. Now, from the wrist up, the light liquefied for a second and then solidified again, elongating. A whip of golden energy, with a looped tip, uncoiled from my hand, cracking in the air with the sound of distant thunder.
"Yes!" I shouted, and in a fluid motion, I flicked my wrist.
The lasso of light obeyed perfectly, stretching five meters and wrapping around the water tank's piping. I pulled. The light locked, solid as steel. I had range. I had control.
The euphoria was short-lived. The cell phone in my left pocket vibrated, breaking the magic of the moment. The lasso dissolved into golden particles.
It was Lucas.
"Dayanne?" his voice was choppy, tense.
"I did it, Lucas," I said, panting, still looking at my glowing hand. "I passed the Circle."
"Great, because time is up," he replied quickly. "The algorithm pinged. One of the Alencar family construction sites, in the East Zone[2]. The entropy level there just skyrocketed. It's not just Vitor, Dayanne. The energy readings indicate they are trying to open a rift. They're going to bring something big through to our side."
I felt a cold knot in my stomach, but this time, it wasn't accompanied by helplessness. I clenched my fist of light. The glow was now denser, more "real."
"Send me the location," I said, grabbing my jacket. "I'm going to show them how we tame wild beasts in Minas."
I hung up the phone. The evolution had come at the right time. Now, I wasn't just a barrier. I was the Cowgirl of the Apocalypse.
[1] Bixiga is considered one of the most traditional neighborhoods in the city of São Paulo, although it does not officially exist as such in the city's administrative division.
[2] The East Zone of São Paulo is a vast and diverse region, known for traditional neighborhoods such as Mooca, Tatuapé, Penha, Brás, Itaquera, and Vila Prudente.